Noncomparative Religion
by crackers4jenn
Summary: Everything we saw in 1x12, but minus Shirley throwing her party. Also, it's pretty much a COMPLETELY different story than everything we saw in 1x12. Or, "Hey, guys. Jeff has a new place."


A/N: You need to have seen Comparative Religion for this to make sense, because I refer to it a lot without providing a background. A lot! And if you haven't watched it, you're going to be lost. Basically, the storylines I snagged are Jeff + the bully and Jeff's Spanish issues, turning them into this fic where Shirley is not running around, nagging everyone to join her Christmas party. So, I hope you can follow along!

A/N the second: This is part 1. Part 2 is 75% finished, but I didn't want another 8000 word monster nobody wanted to read! So I am tricking everyone by separating it into two pieces. Hahaha, you lose! Ahem. I mean, happy reading!

1.

Jeff is a grown man, and outside of really bad movies, grown men do not get in fights with other grown men, especially on the campus of a community college. It's like picking a fight in the home decor department at Sears. How is this good for anyone's ego?

Except he defended Abed's right to hoard Christmas cookies, so now Jeff is that guy who doesn't want to fight the guy who publicly called out his honor in front of a dining hall full of people he will at some point in life probably legally defend, but has to in order to retain his great sense of self-worth.

Once the beat-down has been arranged, and thank god they're doing it near an exit he parks close to, Jeff plops back down at the table, Abed and what's left of his cookies following suit.

"Jeff's my bodyguard now," he announces to the group, happy with this notion, though moderately so.

Britta's eyes are wide, surprise on her face. "I can't believe you just did that."

Which makes Jeff forget about his currently bruised male pride. "Britta," he drawls, "I make love, not war. Except in this case, where, so help me, I will make war all over that dude's face."

"Yeah, no," she readily agrees, "trust me. I believe you. Right now, I am so firmly planted in the land of belief, I've got like, roots."

Troy's hand hovers over the plate of cookies. "Can I?"

Abed shrugs. "They've become a metaphor for Jeff's heroism. But okay."

"I love Christmas cookies," Troy sighs, grabbing the biggest, most frosted and sprinkled one. "If there was a food I had to eat for the rest of my life, and it wasn't french fries or pizza or something else cool, I'd pick Christmas cookies. Christmas cookies are cool."

"Totally," Annie smiles at him.

Before they all scatter, Shirley makes sure everyone acknowledges their WWBJD bracelets by raising their hands, showing off her hard-crafted work. Somehow she doesn't notice the cringe that rides like a wave through everyone but her.

2.

Señor Chang gestures Jeff into his office, smirking and looking like the human form of evil.

Jeff assumes this has something to do with the collection of pickled bull's testicles he keeps on his desk, and that thought is only compounded when he settles into the offered seat, the jarred goods on a spotlighted display. Seriously, there's a warm glow, a filtered yellow lamp. It's exactly as disturbing as you think it is.

Señor Chang eases into his chair, attempts to dispel the awkward air with something like a snide smile, leans back and tents his fingers together. He stares at Jeff for a silent, stalling four seconds, and then: "Let me break things down for you, hombre, piece by tantalizing piece."

Jeff's makes a face that is somewhere between _By all means_ and _How are the bull's testicles extracted, exactly? Through which method? It doesn't matter, either way it's got to suck._

Señor Chang swivels. A slow side-to-side pivot. "You are pulling some _stellar grades_. Seriously, amazing job."

"That's what this about? Okay. I can start to breathe again."

"I just, I feel so... what's the word? You know, that word, where a person feels the way I'm feeling right now?"

"I don't want to get too technical, but could it be that you're feeling _awesome_?"

"Right, no. I remember. Completely and totally _inept_, because you, Mr. Winger, are doing a bang-up job of FAILING MY CLASS."

"What?" Jeff actually feels his ego deflate. It's like a fork to a balloon, air pushed out through two small holes, and fast.

Señor Chang leans across his desk, barks out, "Ha!"

"You said my grades were amazing! I believe the word 'stellar' was used, and emphatically."

"Yes, congratulations, your grades are amazingly _wrong_. You are stellar at being a _failure_. That's what I said!"

"How can I be failing? I don't fail. I breeze by in mediocrity, I'm perfectly comfortable with sustaining bare minimum."

"And yet."

"Well, what do I do? Is there extra credit? 'Cause I could do that. I'd hate myself, and I'd probably cry, but if it means passing..."

"Nope! Sorry. This is it for you, I'm afraid."

And an entire semester went down the drain, just like that. A semester of interacting with people, and being liked, and having to pretend to like people, and (worst of all) sometimes even genuinely liking people.

"After," Señor Chang continues, "of course, we see how you do on your exam. You could pass! You could fail. That's the loco way this system works!"

"Wait. So I haven't _failed_, I'm just. Failing?"

"I'd use the Spanish word for 'correct', but," Señor Chang laughs, loud and obnoxious, "do you know it? No, you do not! And it's basic! Okay," he kills the moment, waving Jeff away, "go on, get out of here, I've got lunch with a hot Spanish maid, aka _my wife_, aka _so out of your league it hurts_, and you're cramping my style, so c'mon. Go!"

3.

"Hey, _guys_. Jeff has a new place."

Jeff looks up from his intense, well, slacking off, to six faces staring him down. But only one of them is victim to his death-glare.

"Why?" he asks Britta, the unspoken being _In yet another smooth move of coming onto you (you're welcome), I share my address, and this, devil woman, is how you repay me?_ But she just shrugs and looks pleased with herself.

"Go, Jeff!" cheerleads Annie, high and too zealous and delighted, which means he will probably have four other conversations just like this where she congratulates him in lots of condescending ways. "Good for you! Way to rise up from the chains of homelessness!"

"I wasn't _homeless_," he grumbles. He had a car, people. A car better equipped at being a home than most people's actual homes. Does your house have a seat warmer? Bam. You lose.

Shirley twitters about, hums a soft, "That's so nice!"

"Jeff's antagonistic struggle with home-ownership is over," Abed narrates, "because now he has a real place to sleep. Cool."

"Thank you, voice inside crazy people's head."

"So, Jeffrey," starts Pierce, trying and failing to peel a Fruit Roll-Up, "bet you're getting settled in nicely."

"I can tell where this is leading, and no." He looks in the eye everyone who is surrounding him, just to really drive home what he says next, which is, "No one's allowed over. Ever. Period."

But Pierce just rambles on, too lost in his battle with the Fruit Roll-Up. "When's the official house-warming party? That's what young people do. They warm their house after they've moved in by inviting over guests. My third wife made me jump through that hoop, but I can't remember. Do we, the guests, bring gifts? Or maybe it's snack food. Hey, Ay-bed," he calls, "what's culturally acceptable at your place? Do the people _bring_ a chicken, or kill the one you already have?" Explaining for the others sake, he says in a quieter, conspiratorial tone, "We'll do the opposite of that, and we should be square."

Jeff squashes the idea before it has time to actually bloom into something terrible. "There will be no party. There will be no food. There can be presents, but I ask that you leave them in gift card form pinned anonymously beneath my windshield wipers."

Troy shrugs, oblivious to Jeff's words. "I can come, but I can't cook snacks. Wait. Do Fruit Loops count?"

Actual vote consensus after a 14-minute long debate that was victim to many tangents: yes, Fruit Loops count.

"Neat. It's 'cause Fruit Loops are so convenient, but still so good."

"It doesn't matter," Jeff decides, "because beneath this cynical exterior lurks an interior even more cynical. I'm not having a party."

"Boooooo," Britta eggs the group's dislike on, and, really? He's almost charmed by her desire to make his life a living hell, because she looks amazing doing it, but then he realizes that she is actually succeeding in making his life a living hell, and that just won't do.

"If there _were_ to be a party," Shirley says, "and I'm not saying there will be, Jeffrey, no, I'm just saying that, in the face of possibility, and isn't possibility what we all strive for at the end of the day?" The group nods as a whole, giving Shirley the conviction to finish with, "Well, Jeffrey, I could bring some of my delicious baked goods and what-nots. In the spirit of Christmas."

Pierce, having given up on the Fruit Roll-Up, raises a question. "And in this scenario, would your 'what-nots' be a clever innuendo for--"

"No."

"Okay, then! Jeffrey, I offer something of intangible value."

"Please don't say what I have every reason to believe you will say."

"My body."

"And you said it."

"Much unlike the Wise Men begifting the infant Jesus, I can't give baubles. Trinkets."

"Frankincense. Myrrh."

"But I sacrifice something greater. Something of great--abnormally toned--worth. Freckled, and moled, and weirdly discolored in some places."

"Okay, old man, picture painted and subsequently gouging our eyes out. We got it."

Annie pipes up, a jaunty little side-to-side movement with her words. "Oh! I can bring ice chips! Mark me down."

"No, you can not bring ice chips, because there will be no party where ice chips are needed, because there IS NO PARTY."

Silence.

Troy calls, "Dibs on the Fruit Loops."

"Alright," Jeff says, defeated in this argument, but winning in another. "Ignore me. That's fine. But I have something greater than the power of your combined relentlessness, and that's my address, locked away in a cage of secrecy. Which is my brain. Yeah. That's right."

An obvious end to their study group, Jeff gets up, grabs his books, offers one last thing before hightailing: "So suck it."

4.

The next day, Annie waves something in front of Jeff's face, something it takes him a faltering few seconds to even acknowledge because he is in his 'I just arrived on campus, I know no one who goes here, probably I'm just here for lawyer purposes' zone.

Then he sees that it's a purple flier, assumes she's assaulting him with something he naturally could care less about. "Annie, find someone else to save the whales with."

"Jeeeeeeeff," she cries out, "awww, who knew you were so _sweet_!" Alarm bells crank to high, because, what? Outside of a really unfortunate experience he had with his ninth grade gym teacher, no one calls him that, ever. "Although, I think something might be psychologically wrong with you, because you're usually only sweet after you've been so mean to everyone, and that's just _weird_."

He's gotten in at least four 'what?''s before she notices that, really tall man here with the fantastic-looking hair? Trying to say something!

"What are you talking about?" he asks.

Grinning big, she holds in his face her wielded flier. Of which reads:

**Jeff Winger  
1247 Knox Avenue  
Apartment B**

**COME PARTY WITH ME! TOMORROW NIGHT 12/10/09**

Jeff's blood runs cold.

"At first I thought, printing out fliers? Isn't that a little excessive, even by Jeff's standards? Dial down the flair! Save a paper, save a tree! Except it makes sense, because you're so, lookit me! I'm popular! I've never been to rehab and no one I've socially dated has ever turned gay! Or came out to your entire school on what should've been the most magical night of your young life. Prom. What could've been," she sighs, wistful and heartbroken.

Her face falls, and Jeff waves his hand in front of her, yanks her back into the real world where something pretty fucking terrible is going down.

"Hey, problem child, eyes up here. Where did you get this?"

Her smile comes back, bigger and brighter. "Britta! She handed them out--"

"When you say 'handed them out', you don't mean shredded them into an intangible existence, do you?"

"You... didn't want her to?"

"Yes, what was I thinking, of course I wanted her to out the one place I go to at the end of the day to recharge my sanity! No! This is--" Jeff snatches the flier from her, frowns at its mockingly printed words. "Ugh, now I have to plot out a retaliation attack."

Annie's voice is all admonishing when she says, "Jeff! You can't! You said you were, _you know_. In Spanish. You know?"

Jeff's already got vengeance on the mind. He about-faces, heads back to his car. Britta will pay. Oh, she will pay. She will pay in ways that Jeff has yet to think up right now, because he is an aging man whose brain confuses things like 'make Britta rue the day she wronged Jeff Winger' with 'I should study for the Spanish exam so I don't fail, because that would suck terribly.' Ugh, gross, why. It's like he's failing as a human being.

"Hey! Wait! Jeff!" Annie trails quickly at his side, eager to keep up. "What about your priorities? What about school? School is important!"

Jeff comes to a quick stop, face switched to chagrined. "You're right. I should stop worrying about the socially damaging effects Britta's had on my hard built reputation as a loner, and go to class."

Her eyes get all glossy and happy. There's a little bounce specifically for him, a half-fist raise. "Yay!"

He scoffs, "Pshyeah! Dream on, tiny child prodigy, I am going to slack like I have never slacked before."

Her mouth crumbles into a pout. "You _can't_. Jeff, if you--YOU KNOW--Spanish, then, I don't know! I can't think about that, because thinking about that means I'm thinking in disaster-mode, and disaster-mode makes me panicky, and do you know what happens when I get panicky?!"

"Your voice breaks the space/time continuum?"

"This isn't funny!"

"Annie," he says, low on the snark, so-so on the seriousness, "I'm not going to _you know_," he teases, "Spanish. That would make a horrible story. Nobody likes a horrible story."

"You haven't done any homework, you clearly haven't been doing the classwork, your test scores must be horrendous--"

"You might want to save some of that for the back of my yearbook."

She screws her face into a strong determination. "Post-study study group! You and me. Be there," and she whirls around and storms off on a surge of inspiration before he can do something more sane than stare after her like an idiot, like voice his protests.

Never mind. He has revenge to plot.

5.

It seems like he's in control mode, all fliers accounted for, when--

"Mr. Winger," croons the Dean, bumping elbows with Jeff in the hallway. He's still in his Father Winter outfit. Naturally Jeff's mind protests with a mental scream of _How does someone as awesome as me get reduced to these kinds of altercations on an unfaltering and, frankly, horribly unjust basis?_

Continuing in the tone equivalent of a festive, upbeat jig, the Dean sinks his claws right in. "I only have one question. Well, three. Or one. You know what, make that four. Do I bring a gift? Hm? Maybe a festively adorned stocking, or a hat with a purposely and precociously propped mistletoe, some non-denominational fruit cake--"

"As disturbing as your words are, and believe me, they are disturbing. They're failing to connect. What are you talking about?"

And the Dean bounces in his step. "Why, your holiday party, of course!"

Jeff actually has a mild stroke, or at least that's what this shooting pain of non-awesome feels like. "Who told you about that?"

"Told?" laughs the Dean, and then there it is, that purple flier currently causing Jeff so much anxiety. God help him if he gets a gray hair over this. Bridges will be burned if he gets a gray hair. "You mean, _invited_."

Jeff snatches the flier away from him. "Yeah, well, sorry. This is wrong."

"How could life's greatest fulfilled wish be _wrong_? Ahem. For you! That's just _awful_. Say," the Dean taps thoughtfully at his cheek, "should I dress in slacks, or themed-wear? Probably themed. Unless slacks. I bet themed."

"This," Jeff shakes the flier, "is a _printed copy of lies_."

"Soooooo. Slacks?"

"There's no party! There's never _been_ a party, there will never _be_ a party!"

The Dean scratches at his temple, uncaring of Jeff's public and crowd-gathering outburst. "Eh, the address. That's probably fake too, then. Right? A fake. Something to throw people off the scent of where you really live, where you go home to at night, just you and a long day's build up of tension, and frustration, and a bag of massage oils... and where is that again?"

Jeff crumbles up the flier, shoves it emphatically into a passing garbage can.

"She will pay."

6.

It's as he's entering the library that Mike and his gang of nerdy, cut-off wearing goons crowd him.

Jeff sighs and rolls his eyes towards the ceiling. Really? He is being punished with this now?

"Lookie what I found," chirps Mike, and because anything else would be acceptable right now (seriously, _anything_ else), Jeff doesn't even have to look to know that what's been found is that damn flier, haunting him.

Mike chews his gum, loud and with more effort than should be required. "Is the Christmas princess throwing a Christmas party?" he taunts, then laughs at his own lame joke.

"It's demeaning because you implied I was a girl. On the inside is where it really hurts."

Jeff moves to walk around him, but Mike slides in that direction, blocking him. He taps Jeff in the chest, the flier crumpled between his fingers.

"I'm still beating you up tomorrow."

Jeff shrugs with his face. "That's debatable."

"Is it? Is it really?"

Jeff's pretty sure that it is. "Yeah."

"Four o'clock," Mike says, poking at Jeff's pecs again.

"Five o'clock," Jeff retorts, "because I've got statistics at four and I really need to pass that class, but afterward? Prepare to have my _fist_ get _intimate_ with your _face_."

Mike pulls up to his full height, mustache all a'quiver. "Bring it, buddy."

"Oh, I plan on bringing the crap out of it."

Then Britta glides past, snarks, "Get a room, you two," as she heads off into the study area.

"How 'bout getting your _face_ a room!" Mike shouts after her.

Jeff watches him with something like disappointment. "Yeah, you definitely handled that."

"Shut up. Five o'clock." One last thump on Jeff's chest, and then, "Don't be late."

7.

"You," Jeff accuses, eyes locked on Britta's.

She gives him a half-smile, all innocence and _who, little ol' me?_ "H_ey_, Jeff. What's up?"

Jeff drops his books onto the study table with a great, formidable purpose. His Spanish book lands pretty heavily, but his binder slides off, falls to the floor, totally wrecking the bad-ass ambiance he was setting up.

And her smile grows, padded with something like endearment, something else closer to amusement. And fuck that noise, it is so on.

"Jeffrey," pipes up Shirley before he has the chance to get into things, like, oh yeah, Britta and her death-wish, "I hope you're not in one of your foul moods, because I wanted to talk to you. About the party. About bringing my baked goods and what-nots?"

"And again," Pierce chirps, "just to clarify. When you say 'what-nots'," he wonders, trailing off with a dot dot dot of visual-inducing grossness.

"Baked goods," snaps Shirley. "That's what I mean."

"Fair enough."

Back to the more pressing matter, Jeff demands of Britta, "What's your end game here? A swift, metaphorical kick below the belt? Because, congratulations. Roundhouse landed."

"Actually," she smiles, "I just like knowing the possibility exists that you might cry."

"Cry," he scoffs. "I don't cry."

"You sob like a _sad little girl_."

Annie comes up from behind, grim-faced on his behalf. Yes, thank you. At least there is someone who will acknowledge the disaster that is his home address floating around campus, seen by the masses, distributed to god knows who else.

"Awww. Leave him alone. Jeff's just cranky because he might _fail_," the word is whispered scandalously, "Spanish, and that would let us all down. Wouldn't it?"

Jeff sinks theatrically down into his chair while Pierce nods pretty solemnly, agreeing, "Total let-down, compadre. That means 'migrant worker'. It's slang."

"I wouldn't be let-down," Abed shrugs, then grows serious-faced. "Or would I? I would, because you're my friend, but I wouldn't, because my life is separate from your life, except where our two lives connect, which is here, in this room."

Shirley's gaze goes from Abed's (_that boy is not all there_, her look says) to Jeff's, and she assures, "Not to lay a heavy stone around your currently incapable shoulders, but I would be disappointed if you didn't pass. Remember, Jeffrey, you're better than academic delinquency, especially so close to Christmas time when," she points at her bracelet, taps it twice to make a point, "little baby Jesus is watching." All delivered with a warm smile and a giggle.

Britta's grin grows bigger with each added dose of encouragement and that guilt trip thing Shirley does so well, which reminds him. The flier. The party.

"Who else knows?"

Annie slides into her seat, confusion pinching her eyebrows together. "Who else knows what?" she asks, slinging her Spanish book onto the table.

"About Jeff's _rocking_ holiday bash," answers Britta.

Troy enters the room just in time to hear his plans have been reaffirmed. "I've got three boxes of Fruit Loops for tomorrow, plus one Lucky Charms," he says, easing into his own chair. Pierce greets him with a fist-bump, which he pounds without looking. "That's to create taste diversity."

Jeff lets out a laugh that sounds more like wheezing, looks pleadingly at Britta. "Seriously, how do I get you to stop? In the movies, there's usually a hidden weak spot, but it's almost always protected. Is your mortal coil your protection, she-devil?"

Britta pulls a face. "You know how you used to constantly hit on me, and I'd tell you it was gross, and you'd reply back with something way more obnoxious, just to be _that_ guy?"

"Which reminds me," Jeff says, gives her a slow, warm smile, the kind that gets him things, "your hair looks amazing today. Yeah, the curl of it really emphasizes the collar of your gender-ambiguous sweater."

And she makes another face, more disgusted this time. "See, now you've validated my actions. You need to be brought down."

"You could never bring me down. I'm like John Travolta's fame. Even with an alarming number of box office disappointments under my belt, you still hold me in revere."

The group nods its agreement.

Britta adds, charged by their response, "But that's not even that bad! What you really need, besides a hair care product not targeted for consumer-driven, hive-minded fourteen year olds--" (here, the group gasps, because, ouch, that one connected) "--is to be humanized! You're like--a machine!"

"Say that again," he dares, "but without the strong sense of irony deluding your words."

"Whatever! Face it, you're way more selfish than I am."

"Agreed," he gives in easily. "And now I've admitted my fault for the sake of lessening yours, which means I'm being selfless."

"Ohhh," Shirley hums, "that's true."

"Plus Jeff defended my honor," Abed adds. "That wasn't selfish."

"Publicly," Jeff points out, "where I have a legacy to uphold."

"That didn't count! That was you tapping into your well of inner-gay!"

"From one lesbian to another," Pierce relays for the sake of commentary. "Ouch, that's got to sting."

Britta breathes out a lot of frustrated noises and barking words, most defending her relationship with men, while Jeff finds himself untroubled by the implication that he likes women. Amazingly.

They spend the last ten minutes listening to Pierce tell the first half of a joke involving three lesbians and a bar.

8.

Huddled over his Spanish textbook, it's been thirty minutes when Jeff starts to feel that pressure behind his eyebrows again. Annie catches him rubbing at the sore spot, rolls her eyes, and tells him, "Just so you know, you're horrible at studying," like it should appall him the way it appalls her.

"No," he disagrees, "I'm horrible at _really boring_ studying." It's close to a whine, but c'mon. Totally justified.

She falters, torn between being insulted (she gave a speech before they ventured into this land of torture about how, if she could tutor the homeless, she could tutor anybody, and that included Jeff who once was--here she smiled--homeless!) and wanting to alter the scenario to be less boring, and what she comes up with rattles Jeff's _entire world_. Just a little, or, to look at it from a different perspective, so much he completely forgets to be bored.

She undoes her barrette, slow and with great intent, lets the hair that was pulled back slip and spill and fall softly across her face.

Fast and focused, Jeff's mind hones in one pretty solid fact: last time Annie relaxed for the sake of atmosphere, he practically committed a crime on-stage.

"What are you doing?" he says, choked up with something that he will make sure to tell Chris Hansen later was outrage, and she unties the cashmere sweater around her shoulders, curls it into a tiny ball and puts it near her books.

"What?" She shrugs, loose and easy. "It worked last time."

"Uh, _no_. Last time, and notice the nondescript way I said that, it led to... well, problems."

"But you retained the information!" she says, like some vocal equivalent of a pat on the back. Like, goody for Jeff! Annie waved her boobs in his face and he remembered stuff!

"The debate?" She nods her head, like _duh, what else?_, and he pretty much yells when he says, "I winged the whole thing!"

"It'll help. Trust me."

"If you mean _distract_. Okay."

"Look, see! You've already forgotten about your stress headache!" As if this is an actual result. Giving him a _you can do it!_ smile, she says, "C'mon, we've got two more sections to go and then we use the color-coded flash cards I brought and then I quiz you on everything we've learned this semester and then we're done! That's hardly anything."

Jeff reluctantly goes back to his book, expecting to be saved by something miraculous, like death. It could even be painful. He'd be okay with that right now. Words are read, filtered, and promptly forgotten about. Then his eyes traitorously start to look back up and scan across the table. Oh, look, there's Annie's book, and there's Annie, and yeah, that is her cleavage--

"Okay, what about this," she says, and his eyes snap back to his own book, but not quick enough for her to miss.

A pause. Then:

"Wait," she says, weird and awkward, catching on. "Jeff, you don't want to _win a debate with me_," she laughs, like the idea is ridiculous and far fetched and, hey, they're past all that lingering awkwardness, aren't they? "Metaphorically speaking. Do you? You don't. Do you?"

"What?" he scoffs. "No! _No_." It would be helpful if that came out the least bit convincing or, you know, even manly would do.

Her brows pull together. "Really? Because you're making that face that again."

"Pfft, _no_. My face always looks this handsome."

She looks like she could go on debating otherwise, but instead she gives him a tight, perky grin, all Stepford-student and creepy but, stupid brain, also kind of sweet and endearing too, and she winds up rocking her chair a little closer to him, four really big scoots. Another wide smile aimed his way, and then she's rolling Spanish words off the tip of her tongue, holding up flash cards and charts and cartoon renderings that should probably be offensive, because he's not _completely stupid_, thank you, but actually, it's nice.

They're in a good zone.

9.

Even with el douche-o interrupting his exam, Jeff feels confident to the degree of at least a "C-" that he passed, mostly because there was something about Annie and her assertive-hair that helped him absorb her teachings.

Of course, once he steps outside the classroom, he feels a mental air lock turn on, all that hard-learned information leaking out into the wide, open outer space of his mind, just like that.

Pierce ambles out after him, wiping at his brow. "Well, that took as much out of me as a vigorous sexual thrust," he says, and Jeff closes his eyes, manages a _I just heard that, didn't I?_ nod. Why is he equipped with the power to produce visuals with such amazing clarity? Why, why? It's as he's rolling over this thought that Pierce leans in, whispers full of scandal, "I say that because, while nubile, at my age anything done vigorously, even something as pleasurable as sex--"

"No, I got it. It's got."

"Oh! You sure? I paint a pretty mean word picture, once you get me going."

"Pierce, believe me. I have never been more emphatic than I am right now, in this moment. I got it."

"Okey-dokey!" Pierce slaps him on the back, just as Troy walks out.

"Oh, good," he breathes, this sigh of relief, "I just missed you guys doing one of your white, old-people bonding things."

"Sup," Jeff greets him.

Troy glowers. "I _told_ you," he chews out through a clenched jaw, "you gotta be more rhetoric than that!"

Jeff tries again. "Sup?"

Squeezing his eyes shut, Troy lets out this high-pitched huff of air, then storms off.

Pierce gives Jeff a _Kids! The crazy they spew!_ look before he follows after Troy, tells him, "Now, remember, we don't want to make Jeff feel _old_, do we, T-dawg? He's having one of those mid-life crisis things. Scary stuff. At his age, though, it's normal. Just look at his hair!"

Jeff turns from watching them, only mildly insulted, and like some ninja of stealth, Abed is _right there_ beside him. Man, the kid is _good_.

Head cricked to the side, he stares after Troy and Pierce and says, dull-toned, "An unlikely match."

"So say we all," Jeff mutters.

"Speaking of."

Annie pounces into view, all clasped hands and hair pulled back, which means she's looking all young and impressionable again, but his brain is stuck on Annie-has-woman-shoulders-underneath-that-cardigan, so it's not that big of a deal.

"We_lllllll_," she wonders, eyes big and round, "how'd you do?!"

"I picked false-o," he tells her, unsure, but her grin grows four sizes, which makes his heart do weird things (namely, beat.)

"Jeff! That's the right answer!"

She's jumping up and down, and although he's way too dignified for that, he's smiling along with her. Like, actual-person smile, not ulterior-motive-lurking smile.

Then Abed says, "Your sexual tension manifests strangely sometimes," and it makes Annie stop expressing her joy through giddy hopping.

Britta walks out of class just in time to hear it, and she offers up a non-judgmental, "Ew," as she walks past. Abed shrugs and chases after her, leaving Jeff and Annie in the wake of awkward revelations.

"Well," she says, voice notched up to shrill, "good luck fighting Mike today!"

He says, "Okay!" and they whirl around and stalk off in opposite directions.


End file.
